Functional electrical stimulation

The upper limbs are essential for performing everyday tasks that require a wide range of motion and precise coordination. Planning and timing are crucial to achieve coordinated movement. Sensory information about the target and current body state is critical, as is the integration of prior experience represented by prelearned inverse dynamics that generate the associated muscle activity. We propose a generative model that uses a recurrent neural network to predict upper limb muscle activity during various simple and complex everyday movements. By identifying movement primitives within the si

…intervention applied to enhance functional recovery to people with spinal cord injuries. Although the activity dependent plasticity mechanisms induced in the spinal networks remain unknown, extensive studies in humans and animal models have revealed the importance that the intrinsic variables of each rehabilitation regime have for the obtaining the highest degree of recovery. Nevertheless, since the gain achieved is incomplete, compensatory, or synergistic interventions which can increase the efficiency of patient’s sensorimo

Central nervous system injuries impede motor commands transmission to target muscles. Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) bypass central motor control by directly stimulating the nerves of paralyzed muscles. Intraneural electrode for FES application have the potential to increase the selectivity and decrease the current threshold for activation compared to extraneural or surface electrodes. This study aims to identify electrical stimulus parameters that optimize the use of intraneural electrodes for neuromuscular FES.Electrical pulses were delivered using a non-commercial multi-channel sti

…these synthetic EMG signals to control Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES), which causes the muscles to contract and thereby restores rudimentary voluntary control of the paralyzed limb. In the past few years, there has been much interest in the fact that information from the millions of neurons active during movement can be reduced to a small number of “latent” signals in a low-dimensional manifold compu

The public has a fascination with the brain, but little attention is given to neuroscience education prior to graduate studies in brain-related fields. One reason may be the lack of low cost and engaging teaching materials. To address this, we have developed a suite of open-source tools which are appropriate for amateurs and for use in high school, undergraduate, and graduate level educational and research programs. This lecture will provide an overview of our mission to re-engineer research-grade lab equipment using first principles and will highlight basic principles of neuroscience in a "DI